The Human Experience

Events for the week of July 25-Aug. 1

We continue our DIY series this week with a project that can be used for gifting or decorating your home. Sarah Early, owner of Dodeline Design, takes us through the steps of creating bunting, which is about as popular as owls and mustaches in the design world these days (and trust us — that's pretty popular). You probably already have most of the materials that you'll need, and in less than an hour you can make a stylish focal point for any room.

"Being a stationery designer and paper connoisseur, I had quite a bit of paper around, so I made this bunting from Kraft brown paper, a cool textured polka dot paper, and a few fun patterned Christmas papers I had lying around," Early says. Best of all, the project is highly versatile — use different types of paper for different holidays, add letters to spell out words, or use pinking shears for a fun touch. The bunting looks great hanging over a bed, across a mantle, or in a dining room.

Materials Needed

1. Measure where you want to hang the bunting to try to get a general idea of how many feet you'll need. Don't forget that you will want it to sag some — the easiest way to do this is to pull out your ribbon or twine and hang it up like you want it. Then just pull it down and measure. Make sure you leave enough at the ends to hang the bunting with.

2. Cut diamond-shaped pieces from your paper, using the ruler and pencil if you want to be exact. We made our diamonds about 8.5" tall by 4.25" wide — basically, fold a letter-sized sheet in half and snip off the corners. You can adjust that to make your bunting unique, though — longer and skinnier or shorter and fatter, whatever you like.

3. Take a few triangles and lay them out on your string to get an idea of how far apart you want each one to be.

4. Once you have that figured out, add this number to the width of your diamond (so 2.5" apart + 4.25" wide = 6.75") and divide into how many feet you want to make (6' = 72" of bunting, divided by 6.75" = 10.6). So for the example, you'll only need about 11 diamonds.

5. Finish cutting!

6. Lay out your string on the floor and measure (or just eyeball) your placement. The string is going to go through the center of the diamond, so place the diamond underneath the string, and then fold the diamond in half over so it becomes a triangle.

7. Use double-sided tape underneath the string to secure the triangle. Then tape the point of the triangle together and you're done with one.